Weeks before Shamar Elkins opened fire inside a Shreveport home and killed eight children, seven of them his own, the 31-year-old told his stepfather that "some people don't come back from their demons." The remark, relayed by stepfather Marcus Jackson, now reads like a confession made before the fact. On Easter Sunday, around 6 a.m., Elkins turned those words into the worst mass killing Shreveport has ever seen.
Police say Elkins shot most of the children in the head while they slept. One child was killed on the roof while trying to escape. Two women, his wife, Shaneiqua Pugh, and a second woman police believe was his girlfriend, were also shot and seriously wounded. Elkins then fled, carjacked a vehicle, and was killed by law enforcement during the pursuit, Fox News reported.
The dead children, five girls and three boys, ages 3 to 11, have been identified as Jayla Elkins, 3; Shayla Elkins, 5; Braylon Snow, 5; Kayla Pugh, 6; Khedarrion Snow, 6; Layla Pugh, 7; Markaydon Pugh, 10; and Sariahh Snow, 11. Seven were Elkins' own children. The eighth was their cousin.
All eight children had been gathered at one house in Shreveport when the attack began. Shreveport Police Department spokesman Christopher Bordelon told NBC News that Elkins shot his wife in the face at the home where the children were found. A second woman was shot at a separate house nearby. Crystal Brown, a relative of one of the wounded women, told the Associated Press that Elkins shared four of the slain children with his wife and three with the other injured woman.
Brown said the couple was in the middle of separation proceedings and was due in court on Monday. They had been arguing about the relationship ending when Elkins opened fire. Elkins and Pugh had married in 2024.
Bordelon described the scene as "an extensive scene unlike anything most of us have ever seen." Shreveport Police Chief Wayne Smith echoed that assessment. "I just cannot begin to imagine how such an event can occur," Smith said, as the Washington Examiner reported.
Mayor Tom Arceneaux called it "a tragic situation, maybe the worst tragic situation we've ever had in Shreveport." Shreveport Councilman Grayson Boucher put the toll in blunt numerical terms: the city had "more than doubled our homicide rate" because of a single act of domestic violence, the Washington Times reported.
Before the shooting, Elkins called his mother, Mahelia Elkins, and his stepfather, Marcus Jackson. The New York Times reported that during the call, Elkins said he was drowning in "dark thoughts" and wanted to end his life. He told them his wife wanted a divorce.
Jackson tried to talk him through it. As he later recalled to the New York Post:
"I told him, 'You can beat stuff, man. I don't care what you're going through, you can beat it.'"
Elkins' response has haunted his stepfather since. Jackson recalled him saying:
"Some people don't come back from their demons."
Mahelia Elkins said she was unclear what problems her son and his wife were dealing with. She had reconnected with Elkins more than a decade ago after leaving him to be raised by Betty Walker, a family friend.
Walker, who did not witness the shootings, described learning of the massacre in the starkest terms. She said Elkins had shot his wife several times in the head and stomach. The last time she saw him was when his family came over for dinner the previous weekend.
Walker told reporters:
"I was getting up this morning to make myself some coffee, and I got the call. My babies, my babies are gone."
Elkins had two prior convictions. In 2016, he was convicted of driving while intoxicated. In 2019, he was convicted of the illegal use of weapons. A March 2019 police report detailed that Elkins pulled a 9 millimeter handgun from his waistband and fired at a vehicle five times after the driver pulled a gun on him. One of the bullets was found near a school where children were playing.
He served with the Louisiana Army National Guard from August 2013 to August 2020 as a signal support system specialist and a fire support specialist. An Army official told Fox News Digital that Elkins had no deployment history and left the service as a private. He later worked at UPS, where a co-worker described him as a devoted father who often seemed stressed.
That profile, a weapons conviction, a history of firing a handgun near a school, and a military background with no advancement, raises hard questions about what systems, if any, flagged Elkins as a risk. The fact that he was convicted of illegal weapons use in 2019 and still had access to a firearm on Easter Sunday demands an answer from Louisiana authorities. Cases involving military-connected suspects and domestic violence have drawn increasing scrutiny for exactly this kind of gap.
Authorities were confident the shooting was "entirely a domestic incident," Newsmax reported, citing Bordelon. Crystal Brown's account, that the couple was separating, that a court date loomed, that the argument was about the relationship ending, fits a grim pattern familiar to anyone who works in domestic violence response. The most dangerous moment in an abusive relationship is often the moment of separation.
What makes this case distinct is the scale. Eight children. Ages 3 to 11. Shot in their sleep. One killed trying to flee across a rooftop. This was not a crime of impulse that ended in a single act. Police say Elkins moved across multiple locations, shooting at three homes and targeting ten people in total.
The warning signs were not subtle. Elkins told his stepfather he couldn't escape his demons. He told his family he wanted to end his life. He had a weapons conviction and a documented history of firing a gun in a public area. The separation was escalating. A court date was set. And yet, on Easter morning, eight children were asleep in a house with a man spiraling toward the worst act of violence in Shreveport's history.
Investigators have not publicly disclosed whether anyone contacted law enforcement or social services before the shooting. That question, who knew, and what was done, will shape whether this tragedy produces accountability or just grief. Disturbing confessions of dark impulses before mass violence have surfaced in other recent criminal cases, raising the same painful question each time.
The names of the dead children deserve to be read slowly: Jayla, 3. Shayla, 5. Braylon, 5. Kayla, 6. Khedarrion, 6. Layla, 7. Markaydon, 10. Sariahh, 11. Five girls. Three boys. None old enough to drive, vote, or defend themselves.
Shreveport now joins a list of American cities marked by acts of domestic violence so extreme they defy the usual categories. The shooter is dead. The children are dead. The two women he shot are fighting for their lives. What remains are open questions about a system that watched a man with a weapons conviction, a crumbling marriage, and self-described "dark thoughts" walk into a house full of sleeping children with a gun.
Suspects who invoke demonic forces or satanic imagery before committing acts of violence are not as rare as the public might hope. A recent case in Pennsylvania involved a man who styled himself after Satan and pleaded guilty to threatening federal officials. The language differs. The pattern of escalation does not.
Elkins' co-workers saw stress. His family heard despair. His record showed a man who had already fired a weapon recklessly in public. Somewhere between the warning and the act, every safeguard failed. Cases of extreme violence tied to mental health crises keep producing the same aftermath: shock, grief, and a trail of missed signals that only looks obvious in hindsight.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Those in crisis can also text START to 88788.
Eight children are gone. The demons Shamar Elkins said he couldn't escape were never really his to claim. They belonged to the people who had to live with what he did.
A New Testament scholar who spent four years consulting scientists and archaeologists across the globe says he can establish 65 facts about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, without ever opening a Bible. And readers are buying the argument in large numbers.
Dr. Jeremiah Johnston's book, "The Jesus Discoveries: 10 Historic Finds That Bring Us Face-to-Face with Jesus," hit No. 2 on Amazon Charts' nonfiction bestseller list last week and climbed to No. 3 on the New York Times Bestsellers List this week, Fox News Digital reported. Released in March by Baker Publishing Group, the book lays out a case that physical artifacts, from burial cloths to ancient coins, corroborate the biblical account of Christ.
Johnston, a pastor and president of the Christian Thinkers Society, told Fox News Digital that the evidence trail runs far deeper than most believers or skeptics realize.
"It turns out that we can learn 65 facts about the birth, the life, the ministry, the miracles and, of course, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus... before we ever open the Bible. And no other religious figure on planet Earth has ever been this well evidenced."
That is a bold claim. But Johnston's pitch is not aimed at the choir alone. He has taken his research to several popular podcasts recently, including the "Shawn Ryan Show," where his appearance drew more than one million views. The chart performance suggests an appetite, well beyond church pews, for material that treats the foundations of Christianity as a question of evidence rather than blind faith.
Much of Johnston's book centers on the Shroud of Turin, the ancient linen bearing the faint image of a crucified man. The shroud has been a flashpoint between believers and secular critics for decades. Johnston told Fox News Digital the physical data points to something science cannot easily explain away.
He described blood chemistry on the cloth that, he said, reflects extreme physical trauma, high levels of ferritin and creatinine, red blood cells broken down in bilirubin from sustained torment, and a wound on the left side piercing through the fifth and sixth ribs.
Then there is the image itself. Johnston pointed to its almost impossibly thin surface layer.
"The image is only 0.2 microns thin. You realize that's one-fifth of the thickness of a piece of our hair?"
Italian physicist Paolo di Lazzaro, a senior researcher at the ENEA Research Center in Rome, spent five years trying to recreate the image, Fox News Digital reported. Johnston cited di Lazzaro's work as evidence that no known medieval or modern technique can reproduce it. Johnston said di Lazzaro's research concluded it would take "a burst of 34,000 billion watts of radiant energy delivered in one-40 billionth of a second to create the image."
For Johnston, that finding reframes the entire artifact. He told Fox News Digital plainly:
"That's why I say the Shroud of Turin is not a death cloth; it is a resurrection cloth. That is the moment when Jesus' physical body came back to life."
Johnston is not the only public figure to argue that the evidence for Christ's resurrection can withstand rigorous scrutiny. A former cold-case detective and a longtime atheist have both said the evidentiary case for the Resurrection changed their minds entirely.
Skeptics have long leaned on a single data point: a 1988 carbon-dating test that returned a date range of 1260, 1390 AD, suggesting the shroud was a medieval forgery. Johnston said that test has been "discredited" and that more recent analysis using wide-angle X-ray scattering, or WAXS, "confirmed a 1st century date."
He also said pollen samples taken from the cloth are native to the Jerusalem area, a geographic detail that, if accurate, would be difficult to square with a European forgery crafted centuries after Christ.
It is worth noting what the Fox News Digital report does not include: the names of the specific peer-reviewed studies Johnston says discredited the 1988 test, or the full details of the WAXS study he cites. Those gaps do not erase the argument, but they leave room for fair-minded readers to press for more. Johnston himself seemed to welcome that posture.
"We should be skeptical of anything we commit our lives to. The beautiful thing is, the deeper you go with your questions into Christianity, the more rock-solid our faith becomes."
That willingness to meet doubt head-on is part of what distinguishes Johnston's approach. He is not asking people to stop asking questions. He is saying the answers hold up.
The book does not rest on the shroud alone. Johnston pointed to an artifact dubbed the "Jesus Cup," which Fox News Digital reported is dated to approximately 50 AD, within two decades of Christ's crucifixion. He also cited a seventh-century solidus from Emperor Justinian II that bears an image of Jesus, offering what he described as another thread in a long chain of physical evidence.
These artifacts span centuries and continents, from first-century Jerusalem to medieval Europe to modern-day Turin. An immersive exhibition on the shroud drew visitors to Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, on November 18, 2025. Weeks earlier, on April 28, a virtual "Holy Shroud" experience was inaugurated at Piazza Castello in Turin, Italy, for the Feast of the Shroud.
Public interest in archaeological connections to biblical history has been growing for years. Discoveries like a fifth-century Christian monastic site unearthed by Egyptian archaeologists continue to surface, reminding the world that Christianity left deep material footprints long before the modern era.
Johnston spent the past four years traveling the globe to build his case, consulting with scientists and archaeologists whose names and full credentials are not detailed in current reporting. That legwork produced a book that, whatever one makes of its conclusions, treats the question of Jesus' historicity as something that can be investigated, not merely believed or dismissed.
The chart performance tells its own story. In an era when faith is often treated as a private embarrassment by mainstream cultural gatekeepers, a book arguing that hard science supports the central claims of Christianity does not merely sell, it surges. No. 2 on Amazon. No. 3 on the Times list. Over a million views on a single podcast appearance.
That is not a fluke. It reflects a public hunger for something the secular establishment rarely offers: permission to take the historical foundations of Christianity seriously in the same way one might examine any other ancient claim. Johnston's argument, that 65 verifiable facts about Jesus exist outside the Bible, meets that hunger directly.
The broader trend is hard to miss. From a BBC presenter who became a Christian after examining the evidence for God to scholars who treat ancient texts and artifacts as serious data, a growing number of public voices are pushing back against the assumption that faith and reason occupy separate rooms.
Johnston framed his work not as an attack on skepticism but as an invitation to follow the evidence wherever it leads. As he put it, the resurrection was the reason the New Testament was written at all.
"Not a shred of the New Testament would have been written"
, without the resurrection, Johnston told Fox News Digital.
Interest in how ancient discoveries intersect with Scripture extends well beyond the shroud. Readers have followed stories ranging from an ancient Egyptian scroll tied to claims about biblical giants to pastors drawing connections between current events and Old Testament prophecy.
Open questions remain. Independent verification of Johnston's specific scientific claims, the WAXS dating, the pollen analysis, the energy calculations, will matter as the book draws wider attention. Serious claims deserve serious peer review, and Johnston appears to agree.
But the market has already rendered one verdict. Millions of Americans want to hear the case. They want to weigh the artifacts, examine the data, and decide for themselves whether the evidence holds.
In a culture that often tells believers to keep quiet, that impulse is worth more than any bestseller ranking.
Montana's highest court ruled 5-2 on Tuesday that the state likely cannot require birth certificates and driver's licenses to reflect a person's biological sex, upholding a lower court injunction that blocks a 2022 policy while the case continues. The decision in Kalarchik v. State of Montana hands a significant win to the ACLU, which brought the challenge on behalf of two biological men who identify as women.
The majority held that the policy likely violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Montana state constitution. In the court's opinion, the justices declared that "transgender discrimination is, by its very nature, sex discrimination", a sweeping assertion that two dissenting justices rejected in sharp terms.
The ruling does not end the case. It sends the matter back to lower courts for further proceedings. But the practical effect is immediate: Montana must continue allowing individuals to obtain government-issued identification documents that list a sex different from their biological reality.
The 2022 policy at issue required Montanans to carry birth certificates and IDs matching their biological sex. The ACLU of Montana challenged that policy, and a lower court issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement. The state appealed. On Tuesday, five justices affirmed the injunction.
The majority's reasoning collapsed the distinction between sex, a biological fact, and gender identity, a subjective self-perception. By declaring transgender discrimination to be sex discrimination "by its very nature," the court adopted a legal framework that treats a person's feelings about their sex as equivalent to their actual sex for purposes of equal protection analysis.
Justice Jim Rice, joined by Justice Cory J. Swanson in dissent, did not mince words. Rice wrote that the ruling forces the state to issue what he called "falsified legal documents."
Rice went further, as Breitbart News reported:
"The Court rejects what the United States Supreme Court and other courts in the country have recognized: one's gender identity choice does not constitute a protected class that establishes a basis for a sex discrimination claim."
That dissent frames the core problem. The majority did not merely protect individuals from mistreatment. It effectively created a new constitutional right, the right to government documents that affirm a chosen identity over biological fact, and grounded it in an equal protection clause that says nothing about gender identity.
Malita Picasso, a staff attorney for the ACLU's LGBTQ & HIV Project, framed the ruling as a national signal. In a statement, Picasso said:
"Today's ruling is an important victory for transgender people across the state of Montana, and perhaps even a glimmer of relief to transgender people across the country who are enduring a relentless effort to strip away their rights at nearly every level of government."
Picasso added: "We will not stop fighting for transgender Montanans." The language is revealing. The ACLU frames any requirement that government documents reflect biological reality as an attack on rights, rather than a basic expectation that official records be accurate.
Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen's office offered a far different assessment. A spokesperson for Knudsen told a local news outlet that "requiring the state to issue false documents simply doesn't change the reality that men cannot become women, and women cannot become men."
The spokesperson went on to criticize the court itself, in terms that suggest the attorney general views the ruling as ideologically driven rather than legally sound:
"It's disappointing, but not surprising, that once again the majority of the Montana Supreme Court chose to advance the agendas of their woke political allies rather than evaluate the case on its facts. We should expect this out of California or Colorado, but not Montana."
That comparison to California and Colorado is pointed. Montana voters did not elect their legislature to mirror the policy preferences of deep-blue states. Yet the state supreme court's majority has now imposed an outcome that the elected branches explicitly rejected when they enacted the 2022 policy.
The Montana ruling fits a broader pattern of courts intervening in gender-identity disputes to override legislative choices. Across the country, judges have increasingly treated gender identity as a category deserving heightened constitutional protection, even when no statute or constitutional text says so.
The U.S. Supreme Court has waded into similar territory in recent months. The justices recently heard arguments in cases involving transgender athletes, drawing sharp public debate over whether biological sex should govern eligibility in women's sports.
At the federal level, the Trump administration has pushed back. The DOJ filed a Title IX lawsuit against Minnesota over policies allowing biological males to compete on girls' sports teams, a direct challenge to the same ideological framework the Montana court just endorsed.
Justice Rice's dissent highlights the legal tension. He noted that the U.S. Supreme Court and other courts have recognized that gender identity does not constitute a protected class for sex discrimination claims. The Montana majority simply rejected that reasoning without waiting for higher courts to settle the question.
Other state courts have confronted similar fights over whether legislatures or judges get the final word on contested social policy. The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled 8-1 that Colorado's conversion therapy ban amounted to viewpoint discrimination, a reminder that courts can also check progressive overreach, when they choose to.
The case now returns to the lower courts for further proceedings on the merits. The preliminary injunction remains in place, meaning the 2022 policy stays blocked for the foreseeable future. The state will have to decide whether to continue litigating or seek other remedies.
For Montana taxpayers, the practical consequence is straightforward: the state must continue issuing birth certificates and driver's licenses that list a sex marker chosen by the applicant rather than one grounded in biology. Government documents, the foundation of identity verification for everything from law enforcement to medical care, will carry information the state's own attorney general calls false.
The broader constitutional questions remain unresolved. Does a state constitution's equal protection clause require the government to affirm a citizen's subjective identity on official records? Does a policy grounded in biological fact constitute discrimination? The Montana Supreme Court's majority answered yes to both. The dissenters, and the attorney general, say the court invented rights the constitution does not contain.
These disputes are playing out in courthouses and statehouses nationwide. The U.S. Supreme Court's own docket reflects the escalating stakes, with high-profile constitutional clashes testing the limits of judicial authority on questions the political branches thought they had settled.
Justice Rice's phrase, "falsified legal documents", deserves to sit with readers for a moment. Birth certificates and driver's licenses are not expressions of personal identity. They are legal instruments. Hospitals, courts, insurers, and police rely on them to establish facts about a person. When the state is compelled to print information it knows to be biologically inaccurate, the integrity of every system that depends on those documents erodes.
The ACLU frames this as a matter of dignity. The attorney general frames it as a matter of truth. The Montana Supreme Court chose dignity. But dignity, however sincerely felt, does not change chromosomes, bone structure, or the medical realities that doctors need accurate records to navigate.
Montana's elected officials enacted a policy rooted in biological fact. Five justices overrode them. The case goes back to the lower courts, but the message from the majority is already clear: in Montana, a court's preferred social theory now outranks the plain language of biology, and the will of the people who wrote the law.
When government documents stop meaning what they say, every citizen pays the price, whether they know it yet or not.
A 23-year-old Michigan man who was medically transitioned at 13 traveled to Sacramento to tell California lawmakers that the very treatments the state wants to protect left him with lasting physical harm, and that a pending bill would make it harder for therapists to question the path he wishes someone had questioned for him.
Jonni Skinner, an ambassador for the advocacy group Genspect, testified before the California Senate Judiciary Committee against Senate Bill 934, a measure sponsored by Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener. The bill would allow people who underwent so-called "conversion therapy" to sue their providers for malpractice, even years after the counseling took place.
On its face, the bill targets practices meant to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. But Skinner and other critics, including the California Family Council, say SB 934 is written so broadly that it could expose any therapist who explores the roots of a young patient's gender distress to ruinous litigation. For Skinner, the issue is personal. He told Fox News Digital that no one ever bothered to ask why he felt the way he did before putting him on a medical conveyor belt.
Skinner said he was diagnosed with high-functioning autism at a young age. As puberty arrived, he grew increasingly uncomfortable with his body and carried shame about the possibility that he might grow up to be gay or an effeminate man. At 13, he was referred to a gender therapist and then an endocrinologist, who prescribed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
In his telling, the system moved fast and asked few questions.
"The medical and mental health providers didn't bother to ask why I felt the way I did. They poisoned my body with blockers and hormones, arresting my puberty and messing with my development. The result is I'm a 23-year-old gay man who's never had an orgasm and may never experience one. Let that sink in."
That quote, delivered to Fox News Digital, distills the case Skinner brought to the committee room. He described fainting spells, painful muscle spasms, urinary problems, and sexual dysfunction, all of which he attributes to the drugs he was given as a child. Years after stopping treatment, he said those problems persist.
The turning point came in 2023, when a new endocrinologist suggested he stop taking the drugs to see whether his symptoms would improve. Around the same time, Skinner began reading leaked internal reports from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, known as WPATH, which he said revealed doubts among the field's own practitioners about the science behind pediatric gender treatments.
The combination shook him. He told Fox News Digital that he realized the evidence base for what had been done to him was thin.
"And I had found that there was, you know, no, low quality to no evidence to doing this to me."
Wiener's bill defines its target as "sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts." His office told Fox News Digital that the measure is narrowly aimed at the practice of trying to force someone from one identity to another, gay to straight, trans to cisgender, or the reverse.
Wiener framed the legislation in stark terms:
"Conversion therapy is psychological torture and quack science that does nothing but harm vulnerable young people. SB 934 cracks down on that horrifying practice, but makes clear that therapists will not be penalized for good faith explorations of a patient's gender identity or sexuality."
Skinner sees it differently. He argued that the bill's language would prevent therapists from doing exactly the kind of exploratory work he wishes someone had done with him, asking a distressed child where the feelings come from before reaching for a prescription pad.
"In all those years, if one therapist would have just talked with me about the origins of my distress, instead of just affirming me and suggesting, you know, further medical intervention is the only solution to me, perhaps I could have been spared much of what I'm suffering with today."
He went further, telling Fox News Digital that under SB 934, therapists would face legal jeopardy for questioning a young patient's stated gender identity or probing the underlying causes of dysphoria. The federal House vote to criminalize sex-change surgeries and puberty blockers for minors shows that the national debate over these treatments is far from settled, yet California appears determined to move in the opposite direction.
"They're not able to, under this bill, question gender identity or really delve with these patients into the underlying causes of their dysphoria. That would be considered conversion therapy under SB 934."
SB 934 arrives against a shifting legal landscape. The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled in Chiles v. Salazar that a Colorado law banning so-called conversion therapy violated the First Amendment because it discriminated against certain viewpoints. Demonstrators gathered outside the court on Oct. 7, 2025, as oral arguments were heard in the case.
That decision complicates the path for any state trying to restrict what therapists may say to patients about gender and sexuality. California's bill, scheduled for another hearing on April 20, will have to navigate the same constitutional terrain. Whether Wiener's office believes SB 934 can survive that scrutiny remains an open question.
Skinner's own experience raises a pointed irony. He described the gender-affirming medical pathway, the very approach California wants to shield from legal challenge, as a form of conversion therapy in its own right. He is a gay man. He said the system steered him away from accepting that reality and toward a medical identity that left him physically damaged.
"For me, it did very much act as a chemical conversion therapy."
Skinner reserved particular frustration for the adults in the system, the therapists, doctors, and advocates who he said acted out of misplaced compassion without stopping to think critically about what was driving a child's distress.
"They feel like they're doing it out of compassion because that's what they're being told... but no one is thinking along the lines of, well, what is making these kids distressed in their bodies? No one is trying to delve in and understand where they're coming from or how they're arriving at these conclusions."
The pattern Skinner describes, affirmation without investigation, is not unique to his case. Across the country, the intersection of gender medicine and institutional accountability has produced sharp conflicts. In New York, Attorney General Letitia James faces a claim that she terminated a lawyer over his stance on gender care, a case that underscores how politically charged the issue has become inside government offices themselves.
Meanwhile, the broader cultural fallout from gender-identity debates continues to surface in unexpected and sometimes tragic ways, as recent events in Tumbler Ridge have shown.
SB 934 passed one committee and now moves toward its April 20 hearing. Wiener's office insists the bill protects good-faith therapy. Critics say it would chill exactly the kind of open-ended counseling that might have spared Skinner a decade of regret. The bill's text, its enforcement mechanisms, and its interaction with the Supreme Court's First Amendment ruling in Chiles v. Salazar remain subjects the California legislature will have to address, if it chooses to.
Jonni Skinner did not go to Sacramento to make a political argument. He went to describe what happened to his body when every adult in the room decided affirmation was the only acceptable answer. He is 23. He carries the consequences every day.
The state of California wants to make it easier to sue therapists who ask hard questions, and harder for anyone to slow down the pipeline that failed him. If lawmakers cannot hear a young man describe irreversible harm and pause long enough to reconsider, the bill is not really about protecting children. It is about protecting an ideology from scrutiny.
The Justice Department has turned to Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., and onetime legal representative for President Donald Trump, to lead a probe into former CIA Director John Brennan and others over the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche tapped diGenova to serve as counsel overseeing the matter, a move the DOJ confirmed to Fox News Digital while declining further comment.
The appointment follows the ouster of Maria Medetis Long, a national security prosecutor in the South Florida U.S. attorney's office who had been running the inquiry. That inquiry includes a false statements probe related to Brennan and broader conspiracy-related investigations. A federal grand jury seated in Miami has been impaneled since late last year, and federal investigators have issued subpoenas seeking information tied to intelligence assessments of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
For Americans who watched the Russia-collusion narrative consume Washington for years, only to see it collapse under its own weight, this is the accountability chapter that was always promised but never delivered. Now it appears the Justice Department is serious about finding out who set the machinery in motion.
DiGenova is no stranger to the fight over the Russia investigation's origins. He represented President Trump during Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. And he has repeatedly accused Brennan of misconduct tied to the genesis of the Russia probe. In a 2018 Fox News appearance, diGenova said Brennan colluded with the FBI and DOJ to frame Trump.
Those are allegations Brennan has denied. The former CIA chief has defended the intelligence community's assessment that Moscow interfered in the 2016 election and has maintained he did nothing wrong in connection with the Russia investigation.
The reshuffling of leadership on this probe, removing Long and installing diGenova, signals that the Justice Department wants a more aggressive posture. DiGenova brings both prosecutorial experience and deep familiarity with the political and legal terrain surrounding the origins of the investigation that shadowed Trump's first term.
The move also comes amid a broader shake-up at the top of the Justice Department. Todd Blanche's appointment as acting Attorney General was itself part of a wave of personnel changes, and his decision to install diGenova suggests the administration views the Brennan matter as a priority.
The investigation is not starting from scratch. The federal grand jury in Miami has been seated since late last year, meaning prosecutors have had months to gather testimony and documents. Subpoenas have gone out seeking material related to the intelligence community's assessments of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The scope of the probe extends beyond Brennan alone. Fox News Digital reported that "others" are also subjects, though their identities have not been publicly disclosed. The nature of the specific allegations remains partially unclear, but the inquiry encompasses both false statements and conspiracy-related matters.
That broader scope matters. The question at the heart of this investigation is not merely whether one former intelligence official crossed a line. It is whether a network of senior officials, across the CIA, FBI, and DOJ, used the apparatus of national security to pursue a political objective. That question has lingered since the Mueller investigation ended without establishing a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.
This is hardly the only front on which the DOJ is pressing for answers about the Russia-collusion era. Former FBI Director James Comey has also been subpoenaed as part of a related effort to trace how the collusion narrative took shape inside federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Critics will frame diGenova's appointment as a political vendetta. That argument writes itself: diGenova represented Trump, he has publicly accused Brennan, and now he is overseeing the probe into Brennan. Democrats have already shown they are willing to cry foul over DOJ personnel decisions. Congressional Democrats have demanded investigations into other Justice Department matters they view as politically motivated.
But the "vendetta" framing only works if you ignore the substance. A grand jury does not get impaneled on a whim. Subpoenas do not issue without a factual basis. And the question of whether senior officials abused their authority to launch or sustain an investigation into a presidential candidate, and later a sitting president, is not a trivial one. It goes to the core of whether the intelligence and law enforcement apparatus can be trusted to stay out of electoral politics.
Brennan's defenders will point to the intelligence community's consensus that Russia did interfere in 2016. That assessment is not what this probe targets. The investigation concerns how officials handled that assessment, what representations they made, and whether anyone lied or conspired in the process. Those are questions of conduct, not of geopolitics.
The broader political environment only sharpens the stakes. Republicans are positioning for further gains in 2026, and accountability for the Russia-investigation era remains a powerful motivator for the conservative base. The left spent years insisting that the investigation was righteous and necessary. If a grand jury finds otherwise, the political fallout will be significant.
Several important questions remain unanswered. The DOJ confirmed diGenova's appointment but declined to elaborate. No criminal charges against Brennan have been reported. The identities of the "others" under scrutiny are not public. The precise content and recipients of the subpoenas have not been disclosed, nor has the exact date of Long's removal from the case.
The absence of charges is worth noting plainly. An investigation, even one with a grand jury, is not a conviction. DiGenova's task is to determine whether the evidence supports criminal accountability, not to deliver a predetermined result. The process will matter as much as the outcome.
Still, the trajectory is unmistakable. The Justice Department has a grand jury, subpoenas, and now a seasoned prosecutor with a clear mandate. The days of treating the Russia investigation's origins as settled history appear to be over. Washington's political class may prefer to move on, but the legal system is moving in the opposite direction.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, discussed the advancing investigation on "Hannity," underscoring that congressional Republicans view the probe as long overdue. For years, lawmakers on the right argued that the origins of the Russia investigation warranted criminal scrutiny. Now the machinery exists to deliver it.
The Russia-collusion saga consumed years of national attention, billions in taxpayer resources, and incalculable political capital. It hamstrung a presidency. It divided the country. And when the dust settled, the central allegation, that Trump conspired with Russia, was not established.
What was never fully answered is who bears responsibility for setting that chain of events in motion, and whether they broke the law doing it. DiGenova's appointment puts a specific person in charge of answering that question, backed by the full weight of a federal grand jury.
If the intelligence and law enforcement agencies that launched the Russia probe acted in good faith, this investigation will show it. If they didn't, Americans deserve to know. Either way, the principle is simple: no one, not even a former CIA director, is above scrutiny when the question is whether the government's most powerful tools were turned against a political opponent.
The left spent four years telling the country that no one is above the law. Time to find out if they meant it.
An Iranian American man living in Los Angeles says President Donald Trump personally wrote him a letter of condolence after his teenage nephew was shot and killed during anti-government protests in Iran, a gesture that underscores the administration's posture toward Tehran at a moment when the regime's grip on power has never looked more fragile.
Majid Moghadasi, who lives in Woodland Hills, told the New York Post that his nephew, Erfan Faraji, was fatally shot on January 8 in the streets of Shahr-e Rey, south of Tehran, while taking part in demonstrations against the Iranian government. Faraji had turned 18 just two days earlier.
Two days after learning of the killing, Moghadasi said he reached out directly to the White House, pleading for help. On January 13, Trump wrote back.
The president's letter, as quoted by Moghadasi, offered direct and personal language. Trump wrote that he and the First Lady were "devastated" by the loss of Faraji.
"Erfan will be held in my heart, and I promise never to forget or forgive the terrible events that took him from us."
Trump also pledged that his administration would "always stand with the Iranian people in their quest for freedom and democracy" and said officials were "working diligently to ensure that the Ayatollah and his murderous regime are brought to justice."
For Moghadasi, the letter carried real weight. He described the experience of reading it as deeply emotional.
"When I first read his response, I felt that my voice, and more importantly, the voice of my late nephew, Erfan Faraji, and many others, had finally been heard. It gave me a sense of acknowledgment and a bit of relief during a very difficult time."
He added that the letter also brought a sense of hope "that justice for Erfan and other innocent young people who lost their lives will not be forgotten."
Faraji's reported death came during a wave of protests that erupted across Iran in late December 2025 and January 2026. The demonstrations, fueled by economic turmoil and longstanding political grievances, drew a ferocious response from Iranian authorities.
Amnesty International reported that the unrest began with strikes in Tehran's bazaars before spreading nationwide. Human Rights Watch said Iranian authorities escalated their crackdown around January 8, allegedly using live ammunition against protesters and often targeting the head and torso.
Moghadasi wrote that the regime responded to demonstrations "not with dialogue, but with live ammunition." Estimates of the death toll vary widely, some reports suggested as many as 5,000 fatalities by mid-January, while broader estimates range from 7,000 to 36,000 killed during the regime's January crackdown. Mass arrests and widespread internet shutdowns compounded the chaos.
Trump's letter was not the only signal from the administration. AP News reported that Trump met with his national security team to discuss U.S. options as the unrest spread. He called the Iranian government's conduct "badly misbehaving" and suggested the United States would "act accordingly" if confirmed reports of killings proved significant. He told Iranian citizens directly: "Keep protesting and take over your institutions if you can."
"The message is they've got to show humanity," Trump said of the Iranian government. He also told protesters that "help is on its way," though he did not specify what form that help would take.
For Moghadasi, the political dimensions of the crisis are inseparable from the personal ones. Internet shutdowns and communication disruptions inside Iran severed his ability to reach relatives still living there.
"Due to internet shutdowns and communication disruptions, we have no direct contact with our family in Iran. We truly don't know their condition or whether they are safe."
He called the uncertainty "extremely stressful" and said many people close to his family are "deeply upset and are hoping for justice for Erfan."
In the weeks after his nephew's death, Moghadasi posted a video tribute online titled in Farsi: "In memory of Erfan Faraji and all the brave who sacrificed their lives for freedom." The gesture reflected a broader pattern of diaspora Iranians using social media to memorialize victims the regime would prefer the world to forget, an effort that carries real risk for family members still inside the country.
Trump has consistently used the presidency as a platform for bold, direct communication, whether sharing personal letters publicly or making sweeping declarations about the direction of his administration.
The story took another dramatic turn on February 28, 2026, when Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was assassinated in Tehran as part of a series of Israeli airstrikes targeting high-ranking Iranian officials. The Iranian government confirmed his death on March 1.
Moghadasi said that when he first heard the news, he had a strong emotional reaction and shared something online. But he quickly pulled it down.
"However, after sharing something online, I realized it could put my family at risk, so I removed it."
That instinct, the reflex to celebrate, followed by the cold recognition that even an Instagram post from Los Angeles could endanger relatives thousands of miles away, tells you everything about the nature of the regime Iranians have lived under. Even with Khamenei gone, the fear apparatus endures.
Moghadasi described his family's emotional state in blunt terms: "Part of what has happened has been emotionally significant for us, but mentally we are not in a good place." He expressed hope that the decisions being made would "ultimately lead to peace, security, and a better future for the people of Iran."
The administration's willingness to engage directly with Iranian Americans affected by the crackdown fits within a broader pattern of assertive presidential leadership that has defined Trump's second term across both domestic and foreign policy.
Presidential condolence letters are not unusual. But one sent to the uncle of an 18-year-old killed in the streets of Iran, five days after the death, carries a specific diplomatic signal. It tells Tehran, and the Iranian people, that the White House is watching, that individual victims have names, and that the administration views the regime's conduct as a matter of personal accountability, not just geopolitical maneuvering.
Moghadasi himself seemed to grasp the dual nature of the gesture. He thanked Trump for his "attention to these matters" while also acknowledging the responsibility it placed on him to "continue speaking up and keeping their memory alive."
Trump's foreign policy toward Iran has drawn sharp lines from the start. His public statements during the crackdown, urging protesters to keep going, warning the regime of consequences, were matched by the private act of writing to a grieving family in California. The combination of public pressure and personal outreach is notable at a time when the administration has shown no hesitation in taking dramatic steps on the world stage.
The death toll numbers remain contested. The regime's information blackout makes independent verification difficult. But the accounts from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and families like Moghadasi's paint a consistent picture: a government that answered its own people's grievances with bullets.
Erfan Faraji turned 18 and was dead two days later. His uncle wrote to the president. The president wrote back. In a world where most leaders offer platitudes from a distance, a five-day turnaround on a personal letter to a grieving Iranian American family is worth noticing, especially when the same administration was simultaneously engaging on multiple fronts with the kind of pace that keeps both allies and adversaries guessing.
Regimes that shoot teenagers in the street and then shut down the internet to hide it do not deserve the benefit of the doubt. They deserve the kind of attention this letter represents, specific, named, and on the record.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Saturday directing the FDA to expedite its review of certain psychedelic drugs already designated as breakthrough therapies, pairing a $50 million federal research commitment with a new pathway for desperately ill patients to access ibogaine under the right to try law.
The signing took place in the Oval Office on April 18, with an unusual cast of figures flanking the president: HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., podcaster Joe Rogan, and Bryan Hubbard, CEO of the nonprofit Americans for Ibogaine. The order targets drugs already in advanced clinical trials and aims to strip away what Trump called "unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles" that have stalled promising treatments for years.
For veterans suffering from PTSD, traumatic brain injuries, and treatment-resistant depression, the executive order represents the most aggressive federal action yet on psychedelic-assisted therapy. It comes as more than 6,000 veterans have died by suicide each year since 2001, a toll Kennedy said far exceeds combat deaths over the same period.
The order directs the FDA to speed its review process for psychedelics that have already earned breakthrough therapy designation. It also mandates improved data sharing between the FDA and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and it requires HHS to accelerate research approval and access to new mental health treatments, including psychedelic therapies such as ibogaine.
Perhaps most significantly, Fox News Digital reported that the order opens a pathway for ibogaine, a psychoactive compound derived from a Central African rainforest shrub, to be administered to seriously ill patients under the existing right to try law. That provision bypasses the standard FDA approval timeline for patients who have exhausted other options.
Trump also announced a $50 million federal research investment, which he said was approved the night before the signing. That federal commitment matches a $50 million allocation Texas Republican leaders had already directed toward ibogaine research.
The FDA plans to issue national priority vouchers for three psychedelic drugs, a step that AP News reported could compress review timelines from months to weeks. The agency is also moving toward the first-ever human trials of ibogaine in the United States.
Trump leaned heavily on a 2024 Stanford University study in making his case. That study followed 30 special operations veterans with traumatic brain injuries who underwent ibogaine treatment. The results, as Trump described them from the Oval Office, were striking.
"They experienced an 80 to 90% reduction in symptoms of depression and anxiety within one month."
A paper published in the journal Chronic Stress described ibogaine as a "psychoactive indole alkaloid" extracted from the Tabernanthe iboga shrub, used for centuries in Central African initiatory rituals. The paper found that ibogaine treatment "is reported to alleviate a spectrum of mood and anxiety symptoms" and allows patients to reprocess traumatic memories, a mechanism with direct relevance to PTSD.
The substance remains classified as a Schedule I drug, and no psychedelic has yet won FDA approval in the United States. That classification carries real political weight. As one policy expert, Ismail Lourido Ali, told Newsmax, "The stigma around Schedule I drugs is significant," but the executive order gives Republican governors and legislatures cover to fund research programs of their own.
Trump's order also includes a provision for fast rescheduling of any psychedelic drugs that ultimately win FDA approval, a step that could remove one of the largest remaining barriers to widespread clinical use.
HHS Secretary Kennedy delivered some of the starkest numbers at the signing. He said more than 14 million Americans live with serious mental illness, and one in four adults experiences a diagnosable disorder each year. Suicide rates have climbed more than 30 percent over the past two decades.
Kennedy reserved his sharpest language for the veteran population, as the administration continues to reshape its national security and veterans' affairs leadership:
"At the same time, millions of Americans living with depression, PTSD, addiction and other conditions do not respond to existing treatments. We owe it to our warfighters and veterans to turn over every stone to alleviate the emotional and mental health blowback from their deployments."
That framing, the gap between what existing treatments deliver and what veterans actually need, is the core of the administration's argument. Standard-of-care therapies for PTSD and traumatic brain injury leave many patients stuck. The executive order bets that psychedelic-assisted therapy can reach patients whom conventional medicine has failed.
Joe Rogan's presence in the Oval Office was no accident. The podcaster, whose show reaches tens of millions of listeners, credited Bryan Hubbard and former Texas Governor Rick Perry with bringing the issue to his attention.
"They told me how impactful this medicine is. And having that conversation with them, millions of people got a chance to hear their story, hear the stories of all the different people that have had life-changing experiences from it."
The political coalition behind the order is broader than many observers expected. Veterans groups, conservative state leaders, and figures like Marcus Luttrell, the former Navy SEAL, have pushed for expanded psychedelic research. Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins praised the order directly, as the Washington Examiner reported, saying it "opens up new possibilities for America's Veterans" as part of an "all-of-the-above strategy" on mental health.
That bipartisan energy is worth watching. The issue cuts across traditional left-right lines in ways that few policy debates do right now. But the administration moved first, and moved fast, claiming ownership of a space that could reshape mental health treatment for a generation.
The executive action fits a pattern of aggressive governance from the White House this spring, from personnel confrontations at the Federal Reserve to sweeping policy directives on immigration and law enforcement.
The order raises questions it does not yet answer. Which psychedelics beyond ibogaine fall under its scope? What funding mechanism will deliver the $50 million federal investment? And how will the FDA balance speed with the safety concerns that have kept ibogaine, a drug with known cardiac risks, on Schedule I for decades?
Trump acknowledged the tension between urgency and caution. "These treatments are currently in the advanced stages of clinical trials to ensure that they're both safe and effective for the American patients," he said. He also noted that research has been underway "for quite some time" but that previous administrations let it languish.
That is the real indictment embedded in this order. The data on veteran suicides, 6,000 a year for more than two decades, did not arrive last week. The Stanford study came out in 2024. Texas committed its $50 million before the federal government moved a dollar. For years, the bureaucratic machinery that is supposed to protect patients also kept promising treatments locked behind regulatory gates while veterans kept dying.
Democrats, meanwhile, face an uncomfortable position. They have spent years talking about mental health funding and veteran care, yet it is this administration that signed the order. As recent polling suggests, the opposition party's ability to claim credit on issues where Republicans act first continues to erode.
Whether psychedelic-assisted therapy ultimately delivers on its promise will depend on clinical results, not executive orders. But for veterans who have tried everything else and found nothing that works, a president willing to push the FDA past its institutional inertia is a start.
Sometimes the biggest obstacle to saving lives is not the science. It is the paperwork.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles sat down Friday with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in a meeting both sides called productive, a sharp turn from an administration that had publicly vowed to cut ties with the artificial intelligence company over what it labeled "woke" AI.
The sit-down marks the clearest signal yet that the Trump White House is willing to override the Pentagon's hard-line stance against Anthropic, a company the Defense Department tried to blacklist as a national security supply-chain risk. The question now is whether strategic necessity will win out over the political fight that put the company on a federal no-fly list in the first place.
Just the News reported that the White House described the meeting as "both productive and constructive," adding that officials discussed collaboration opportunities and protocols for scaling AI technology. The White House also said it plans to host similar discussions with other leading AI companies.
The reversal did not come from nowhere. The Trump administration had previously indicated it would not work with Anthropic, with the president himself posting that the government "will not do business with them again." The Treasury and Defense Departments began stripping Anthropic's AI chatbot, Claude, from their operations. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sought to formally designate the company a supply-chain risk, a label that would have effectively locked Anthropic out of the entire federal procurement system.
Anthropic sued the administration. A federal judge then blocked enforcement of Trump's directive against the company, according to AP News.
The administration's core complaint was that Anthropic's built-in safety guardrails, restrictions the company placed on its AI to prevent certain military and surveillance applications, amounted to a national security threat. The argument: a private company should not be able to intervene during military operations by dictating what its technology will and will not do. Anthropic denied the allegations.
That dispute has not been resolved. But something changed the calculus.
The something appears to be Anthropic's newest AI model, called Mythos. Fox News reported that the model is described as highly advanced and potentially important for cyber defense, prompting renewed interest from the administration despite prior political and national security objections. Trump had ordered a government-wide halt on Anthropic technology after the Pentagon clash, but the White House is now reconsidering that stance.
The New York Post reported that the administration had been discussing providing government agencies advance access to Mythos. Senior officials, including Vice President JD Vance, Treasury Secretary Bessent, and Defense Secretary Hegseth, convened to prepare for the possibility, the Post noted. Some intelligence and cybersecurity agencies were already testing the technology.
The strategic logic is not subtle. A source close to the talks told Axios, in a quote carried by multiple outlets:
"It would be grossly irresponsible for the U.S. government to deprive itself of the technological leaps that the new model presents. It would be a gift to China."
That framing, lose Anthropic, lose ground to Beijing, appears to have concentrated minds inside the West Wing. The administration has consistently treated the AI race with China as a top-tier national security priority, and sidelining one of America's most capable AI firms over a policy disagreement sits uneasily with that posture.
The tension mirrors other moments where the White House has had to weigh political commitments against operational realities. The administration has faced similar dynamics in its interactions with the Pentagon over Iran policy, where competing institutional priorities forced difficult choices at the top.
The White House statement, provided to The Hill, laid out the official version of the meeting's scope:
"We discussed opportunities for collaboration, as well as shared approaches and protocols to address the challenges associated with scaling this technology. The conversation also explored the balance between advancing innovation and ensuring safety. We look forward to continuing this dialogue and will host similar discussions with other leading AI companies."
An Anthropic spokesperson offered a parallel account. Fox News Digital carried the company's statement describing the meeting as a "productive discussion on how Anthropic and the U.S. government can work together on key shared priorities such as cybersecurity, America's lead in the AI race, and AI safety."
Neither statement addressed the lawsuit, the blacklist, or the underlying dispute over AI safeguards in military applications. Both read like the kind of diplomatic boilerplate that follows a meeting where the parties have agreed to stop fighting, at least publicly, without yet agreeing on terms.
A White House official added, as Breitbart reported, that the administration is "engaging with advanced AI labs about their models and the security of software," though any federal use of Anthropic's technology would require a technical evaluation period.
The central tension has not gone away. The administration argued that Anthropic's refusal to remove safeguards on autonomous weapons and mass surveillance applications made the company unsuitable for defense work. Anthropic pushed back, insisting those guardrails were responsible design, not political sabotage.
That disagreement matters beyond Anthropic. It touches a question every AI company building tools for the federal government will eventually face: who decides what an AI system will and will not do, the company that built it, or the government that bought it?
The administration's position has a straightforward logic. If the military deploys an AI tool in a combat or intelligence scenario, the tool needs to work. A company that builds in restrictions on how the government can use its product is, in the administration's view, inserting itself into the chain of command. The national security implications of that arrangement are real.
Anthropic's position also has a logic, even if this publication finds it less persuasive. The company argues that unrestricted AI in military settings creates risks the technology is not yet mature enough to handle safely. Whether that concern is genuine engineering caution or ideological gatekeeping dressed up as safety is exactly what the dispute is about.
The White House has navigated similar tensions between institutional resistance and executive priorities on other fronts, including moments when establishment pressure campaigns tested the administration's resolve on personnel and policy.
The meeting between Wiles, Bessent, and Amodei does not settle the dispute. It opens a channel. The White House said it would host similar discussions with other AI companies, suggesting the administration wants to be seen as engaging the entire industry, not cutting a special deal with a firm it recently tried to exile.
Whether Anthropic's Mythos model ends up in federal hands depends on the technical evaluation the White House official referenced. It also depends on whether Anthropic is willing to modify or remove the safeguards that triggered the fight in the first place. The company has given no public indication it will.
Newsmax reported that the administration was weighing the value of Anthropic's technology against cybersecurity concerns, with some intelligence agencies already testing it. That suggests the practical question, is this technology too good to pass up?, may already be answering itself inside the national security apparatus, even as the political and legal questions remain unresolved.
The broader AI competition with China adds urgency. The administration has treated technological supremacy as a core national interest, and the logic of that position creates pressure to work with every capable American AI firm, even the ones that annoyed you. Decisions about countering China's strategic ambitions have already forced the administration to make pragmatic moves in other arenas.
Several questions remain unanswered. What specific terms, if any, were discussed for Anthropic's reentry into federal work? Will the company adjust its safeguards as a condition of collaboration? What happens to the lawsuit? And does the Pentagon, which started this fight, get a veto over whatever the White House negotiates?
None of those answers came out of Friday's meeting. What came out was a handshake and a press release. That is more than Anthropic had a week ago.
When national security and political grudges collide, the smart bet is usually on national security. The administration appears to be making that bet, and if Anthropic's technology is as advanced as both sides seem to believe, it is the right one. But the company that built restrictions into a tool the military needs should not expect the terms to be generous.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is not expected to leave the bench this year and intends to keep serving into at least 2027, ABC News reported, citing sources close to the 76-year-old conservative jurist. Justice Clarence Thomas, 77, is also expected to remain, according to separate sources.
Fox News first reported Alito's intentions. The news lands squarely on months of Washington speculation, much of it driven by the left, that Alito or Thomas might step down while a Republican president and a Republican Senate could confirm like-minded replacements.
That speculation can now be set aside. Alito has been hiring clerks for next term and has remained, in the words of those close to him, "an active and engaged participant in the court's work." His apparent decision to stay removes from the table a high-stakes, high-profile confirmation battle on the eve of the midterm elections.
The retirement chatter around Alito intensified after he was briefly hospitalized earlier this year for a health scare of undisclosed origin. His age, and the political alignment of the White House and Senate, gave Washington's permanent speculation class all the raw material it needed.
But as earlier analysis of the Alito retirement rumors noted, the talk was always long on conjecture and short on evidence. No public statement from Alito ever hinted at departure. No filing, no letter, no signal from the Court itself.
Alito authored the landmark 2022 opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a decision that cemented his place in the Court's modern history and drew sustained hostility from progressive advocacy groups. That hostility, combined with his age and the political window, fueled a cycle of speculation that fed on itself.
Details of Alito's brief hospitalization only added oxygen to the fire. Yet the sources who spoke to ABC News described a justice who shows no signs of slowing down, hiring staff, preparing for the next term, and fully engaged in the Court's docket.
As for Thomas, the Court's most senior member, sources say he "continues to love the work." In the next few years, Thomas will eclipse the record for the longest-serving justice in American history, a milestone that alone suggests he has no interest in stepping aside.
Thomas, like Alito, has been a target of progressive pressure campaigns urging retirement or recusal on various grounds. None of it, evidently, has moved him. The 77-year-old conservative justice appears content to keep doing the job he was confirmed to do more than three decades ago.
President Trump had previously signaled his readiness to fill vacancies if they arose. As Trump himself said amid the growing retirement talk, he was prepared to fill up to three Supreme Court seats. With Alito and Thomas staying put, that scenario moves off the immediate horizon.
The progressive appetite for managing Supreme Court exits is well documented. When Justice Stephen Breyer began his own retirement process, the announcement leaked before he was ready, and the fallout illustrated exactly the kind of political gamesmanship that surrounds these decisions.
National Review reported that White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain called Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin to tell him President Biden wanted Durbin to know Breyer was about to announce his retirement. Klain asked Durbin to keep the information secret because Breyer planned to make an official announcement the next day. The secret did not hold.
Sources told Fox News at the time that Breyer was not planning to announce his retirement that day and was "upset with how this has played out." As Breitbart reported, Breyer was surprised and caught off guard by the news reports. President Biden himself told reporters, "There has been no announcement from Justice Breyer."
Court-watchers described Breyer as a strict follower of protocol, someone who would announce a retirement at the end of a term, not in the middle of one. One insider told the Washington Examiner:
"He is a by-the-book stickler for following protocol. You announce your retirement at the end of terms, not in the middle."
The same source added that Breyer "did not plan for this to leak out" and "was just beginning the standard process of winding down." Outside groups had been pressuring Breyer to retire, and speculation about possible Biden nominees began within hours of the leak.
The Breyer episode is worth remembering because it shows how Washington treats Supreme Court retirements as political commodities, something to be timed, leaked, and leveraged for maximum partisan advantage. The left spent months pressuring Breyer to leave. When he finally began the process on his own terms, those terms were overridden by political operatives who couldn't wait a single day.
With both Alito and Thomas expected to remain, the composition of the Court's conservative majority holds steady. The Court's docket already includes major constitutional cases that will test the boundaries of executive power, and both justices will be part of those decisions.
The political class will have to find something else to speculate about. No confirmation hearing. No Senate floor fight. No cable-news countdown clock. The midterm elections will proceed without a Supreme Court vacancy dominating the debate.
For conservatives, the news is straightforward good news. Two justices committed to the text of the Constitution plan to keep doing their jobs. The left wanted a vacancy to exploit or a retirement to spin. They got neither.
Some things in Washington still work the way they're supposed to: a justice serves as long as he chooses, on his own terms, without apology.
Former first lady Jill Biden bid $35,000 at a live charity auction for a walk-on role in the second season of Heated Rivalry, the HBO Max series built around a gay romance between rival hockey players. She lost. Two other bidders each paid $125,000 for the same package, a cameo plus dinner with the cast, at the NYC LGBT Community Center's annual Center Dinner, as Breitbart reported.
Biden took the loss in stride, publicly. She posted on X shortly after the bidding ended.
"Guess I won't be heading to the cottage after all, but it was worth a shot! What a wonderful evening supporting @LGBTCenterNYC."
The post confirmed what the evening's attendees already knew: the former first lady's interest in appearing on a show centered on explicit same-sex content was open and deliberate, not accidental. She wanted the role badly enough to put five figures on the table in a room full of cameras.
The lot Biden pursued offered a walk-on role in the show's upcoming second season and a dinner with the cast. Just The News reported that the auction took place Thursday at the NYC LGBT Community Center and that Heated Rivalry centers on a gay romance between players from rival hockey teams. The package ultimately sold twice, to two separate bidders, at $125,000 apiece, meaning the lot alone generated a quarter of a million dollars for the center.
Biden's $35,000 bid was not even close. But the dollar figure still raises a straightforward question: Where does a former first lady, whose husband left office under a cloud of controversy surrounding sweeping pardons for family members, find $35,000 in disposable cash for a television cameo?
That question will go unanswered for now. Biden offered no explanation of the funding source, and no reporter on the scene appears to have pressed her on it.
Heated Rivalry is adapted from Rachel Reid's LGBTQ-themed hockey book series Game Changers. Reid herself was at the gala, where she presented the Cultural Impact Award to the show's creator, Jacob Tierney, and his producing partner, Brendan Brady. Brady was not present at the event.
Dr. Carla Smith, CEO of the NYC LGBT Community Center, praised Tierney and Brady ahead of the dinner:
"Tierney and Brady have elevated and centered queer characters as fully realized leads whose desires, conflicts and tenderness are treated with dignity."
Smith added that the pair had "brought queer joy and storytelling to the mainstream media" and "created work that affirms and advances our community." The language is revealing. The center does not describe Heated Rivalry as mere entertainment. It frames the show as an instrument of cultural change, and it honored the creators accordingly.
That framing matters, because it tells you what Biden was buying into. This was not a generic charity paddle-raise. It was a public endorsement, by a woman who until recently occupied the most visible ceremonial role in American life, of a show whose stated purpose is to normalize and advance a specific sexual and cultural agenda through mainstream media.
Since leaving the White House, the Biden family has remained a magnet for controversy. Hunter Biden's ongoing legal and personal disputes have kept the family name in tabloid rotation. Joe Biden's pardon of his son before leaving office drew bipartisan criticism. And now Jill Biden is bidding five figures for a spot on a show whose content would make most Americans over fifty change the channel.
None of this is illegal. Nobody is alleging a crime. But it is clarifying.
The former first lady spent four years in the East Wing cultivating an image of dignity, education, and quiet service. She taught community college classes. She visited military families. She wore "LOVE" on her jacket. Now, months removed from that role, she is spending $35,000, in public, at a gala, for the chance to appear on a show whose selling point is graphic same-sex romance between fictional hockey players.
The cultural priorities could not be more plain. And they match a broader pattern among elite Democrats who treat LGBTQ advocacy not as one issue among many but as a defining loyalty test, one worth spending real money to pass, even when the cameras are rolling.
Questions about the financial entanglements and influence networks surrounding the Biden family have dogged the former president's circle for years. Allegations of foreign money flowing toward Biden-connected interests remain unresolved. In that context, even a charity bid carries a whiff of brand management, a former first lady signaling to the right donors, the right rooms, and the right cultural gatekeepers that she remains on their team.
Biden bid $35,000. Two anonymous bidders each paid $125,000. The total haul from that single lot: $285,000, assuming Biden's losing bid generated no revenue. The NYC LGBT Community Center clearly knows its audience, and its audience has deep pockets.
For comparison, $35,000 is roughly what a first-year public school teacher earns in parts of the country. It is more than many American families spend on a car. Jill Biden was willing to spend it on a few seconds of screen time and a dinner.
The political class has long operated on a different financial plane than the voters it claims to represent. But there is something especially grating about a woman who spent years lecturing Americans about empathy and sacrifice casually tossing $35,000 at a vanity cameo. The gesture says more about the gap between Washington's ruling families and ordinary citizens than any policy paper could.
Scandals involving the personal conduct of political figures and their families have become a bipartisan fixture in American life, from congressional probes into elite misconduct to tabloid revelations about elected officials. What sets the Biden episode apart is not its severity, it is its casualness. Jill Biden did not hide the bid. She posted about it. She joked about losing. She treated the whole thing as a fun night out.
Biden's post-auction message on X was addressed to the LGBT center's supporters. But the real audience was the progressive donor class, the network of wealthy cultural activists who fund organizations like the center and greenlight shows like Heated Rivalry. In that world, a $35,000 bid on a gay romance cameo is not embarrassing. It is a credential.
The rest of the country, the people who pay taxes, raise kids, and wonder why every institution from Hollywood to the Pentagon seems captured by a single cultural agenda, was not invited to the dinner. They never are.
But they notice. And they remember.
